The Other Side of Midnight

by Mike Heffernan

  You’ll find a lot of your cokeheads at the strip clubs. For whatever reason, strip clubs and cocaine go hand-in-hand. You can’t find one without finding the other. If you were an undercover cop and you were looking for cocaine, all you got to do is drive a taxi, or visit a strip joint. You’ll get all the information you want. That’s been my experience. I don’t care what strip club it is—I don’t give a monkey’s Jesus—if there are girls stripping, they’re doing cocaine in that club. The strippers are doing the cocaine, the patrons are doing the cocaine, and the bar staff is doing the cocaine. I don’t like to tar everyone with the same brush, but it’s in every single establishment.

  This job here, a lot of drivers are doing cocaine, and they’re doing pills. For the life of me, I can’t believe that there’s not a drug testing policy in place. Your daughter gets her license and parks her car Friday night and gets a taxi downtown. She does the right thing. On her way home, she gets one of the cokeheads that are driving. He’s wired and has an accident and kills your daughter. Your daughter is dead because of some asshole that was driving her home. There has to be a drug testing policy put in place for anybody driving the public. If you’re driving a bus or a taxi and you’re driving other people’s youngsters you should have to be tested for drugs. In order for you to get that Class 4 driver’s licence you should have to do a drug test every few months.

  It’s more rampant than anybody wants to admit. For whatever reason, the night shift seems to be more affected. Ten or fifteen per cent of what’s on nights are drug users. I guess it’s a factor of a lot of things. You’re not checked, for one. It’s the only job I know of where you can come to work stoned and go home stoned and nobody ever gives a shit. If you walked into an office tomorrow and you were stoned, your boss, or your supervisor, would say, “Listen, I believe you got a problem. You appear to be stoned.” You can get found out. With this job here, nobody gives a fuck. But, eventually, that is going to cause somebody’s death. It’s amazing that it hasn’t already.

  I know a school bus driver, and he has a plastic cigarette pack your father or mother might have used for rolled cigarettes. He’s got one full of dope, full of joints. He got thirty or forty of them done up in cigarettes. He’ll smoke some of them before his shift that night. The same guy drives a school bus, drives small kids in the daytime. How would you like that, sending your kid out to school tomorrow morning knowing the bus driver is whacked right out of his mind?

  An Eye-Opening Experience

  Bazil, driving and dispatching for twelve years

  Coming into the taxi industry was definitely an eye-opening experience. People who are Monday-to-Friday, regular office-types, have no idea what the world is all about. Think about St. John’s. We have all the amenities of a big city, but we have a small community. Everything is more hidden, that’s all. You can get anything you want in St. John’s. I know how to find most of it, and I don’t even fuck around. I even know hookers by their first name. I see Chrissie out there, and I’m after pulling in on a cold night and letting her sit in the car for ten or fifteen minutes. I’ll give her a cigarette and let her warm up. What are you going to do? It’s not that busy. So what if she’s a hooker? She still got to make a living.

  My brother died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. There were times towards the end of his life when he was in extreme pain. The only way he could get rid of the pain was to roll up some cocaine and a bit of weed and smoke a nice little joint. He would call me on Friday night, and I’d go and pick it up for him. I would never know where to find that stuff if I wasn’t taxiing.

  A Dealer on Every Corner

  Theodore, driving for thirty-eight years

  The first time I ever saw cocaine was years before it was big here. That was 1987, or maybe 1988. I picked a guy up at the Village Mall. He was full of tattoos and hung out at the pinball place that used to be there. He got in, and I drove him to Foxtrap. He said, “Do you want cash, or do you want this.” He opened up a tube of aluminum foil and there was white powder sprinkled all through it. “That’s $1,000 worth of coke.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I got enough problems without adding to them.”

  I was away from the taxiing for about eight years, and I went to the mainland. When I came home, I couldn’t believe how much cocaine was in this town. There’s pretty much a dealer on every corner. Like that one that got busted down on Casey Street. There’s another one across from that, a little further west, and another one up over a store across the way. It’s everywhere. I don’t know why people do it. I’ve seen people lose their homes, their wives and their kids and good salaries all over this stupid white powder that does nothing but kill them.

  I had a guy get in the back. He picked up his buddy down by George Street, and they went around the corner to a rub-and-tug. He said, “I got something for a bit of leverage with the girls.” He knocked on the door, but they’d already gone to bed.

  He got out, and his buddy had me take him to Empire Avenue. On the way back, he scrunched down behind the seat, and I could hear the sniff, sniff. What he was doing was putting the cocaine in the groove of the house key and snorting it before he got home so his wife wouldn’t know what he was up to.

  Reapers

  Danny, driving for three years

  I picked up a young couple on Cabot Street. The girl sat in the front, and the guy sat in the back. It was after four-thirty in the morning. I asked buddy, “Where are we going?”

  “Up to Sobeys on Merrymeeting Road.” I made a right on Lemarchant Road, and he said, “No need to be nervous, man.”

  I looked at him in the rear-view mirror: “What do you mean, ‘No need to be nervous’? Now I am nervous.”

  His girlfriend was like, “No, no—we’re fine.”

  But he kept saying, “No, man. Chill out, man.”

  I stopped the car and said, “You guys got to get out. No offence, but that’s enough.”

  The two of them were crackheads. I call them “reapers.” After four-thirty in the morning, you run into a lot of reapers. You run into the crowd that are drug addicted—the crackheads. You know what the grim reaper looks like? Reapers look like that. They wear hoodies, and they’re skinned right out. There’s no weight on their bodies. That was one of my first experiences with them. I was like, Hold on now. Is this going to happen every time I pick someone up at this hour in the morning? I found that after four-thirty up until about six o’clock you run into a lot of reapers. They go to crack house parties. They’re running drugs, and they’re running booze.

  Reapers are the most dangerous people in the city. They’ll feel you out right away; they’ll make eye contact with you. At first, they’ll usually say something stupid: “I’m just going to my buddy’s house to get a few sniffs, a few snorts.” And then they usually ask, “Where are you from, buddy?” They’re feeling you out. And they’re looking at you, too. They’re looking at your sweater, your clothes, your chains and your watch. Then they’re looking up in your visor because they know cab drivers put cash up there.

  We have day shift drivers who handle them differently. They’re stern. They don’t tolerate any bullshit. They want the money up front. One time, I asked a guy if he had the money, and there was a bit of an altercation. Since then, I try not to ask.

  Here in Newfoundland the reapers kind of shocked me. I was in Toronto for five years, and I knew there was a subculture of drug addicts and crackheads. But I didn’t think it was as serious as it is here. Reapers are pretty creepy and sneaky people. You won’t see them out in the daytime—no way. They’re vampirish. They’re reapers.

  Stolen Meat

  Bazil, driving and dispatching for twelve years

  Two guys from down around Pasadena Crescent were going around talking about selling some meat they had stolen from Sobeys. They asked if they could pay me with it. “No thanks. I don’t buy anything hot,” I said. “Besides, even if I did, how do I know you never found that in the dumpster? That could’ve been there all day.�
�

  “Oh, no—that’s fresh.”

  “I don’t take goods. I only take cash,” I said.

  I brought them to a house up on New Pennywell Road. I can’t remember the number. But they went in and sold the meat, came back and had me take them down to Shopper’s Drug Mart on Empire Avenue. He was going to get his methadone. On the way, he called his drug dealer to bring him his weed. They got beer somewhere, too, and paid me out of the money they got for the meat.

  On the Rob

  Sandra, driving for four years

  There are nights when I get completely wigged out, like incidents that I can’t shake off. You might get a pillhead, for instance, or you might get somebody who is on the rob. If you get some dude who you think might be up to no good, you know you could get accidently wrapped up in it, you might get unintentionally involved. Two or three days later, I’m like the post-traumatic stress case. You start to wonder about every customer. You start to question your own judgement. I’m wondering why I don’t want to go to work. I’m wondering why I want to go home and call it quits.

  I picked up this young guy on Kelsey Drive, and he had a cart at a store that didn’t have carts. I knew right away something sketchy was going on. He told me he’d load up the trunk himself. Typically, to be polite, you would do it, or at least help him do it. When he was loading up, I could feel the weight of what he was putting in the trunk push down the coiled wire springs. I knew I had a load of hot gear in the back of the car. When he got in, he was all out of breath, and he told me where we were going. I knew when he gave me the address where I was going. I knew how bad that could end up. Within a three week period, people there have been arrested with weapons, and this same guy had been in a chase with the cops.

  As we were going down Kenmount Road, he said, “Do you mind if I take my medicine?”

  He hauled out a pill bottle and a metal car charger, crushed up a pill on a credit card and snorted it back without even trying not to be seen, without even trying to hide down behind the seat.

  I Got to Move My Stuff

  Frank, driving for twenty-nine years

  I had a call to go up to Barachois Street behind the Village Mall. It was about two o’clock in the morning. I went there and tooted the horn, and this guy came out. “Put the meter on, man,” he said. “Myself and the old lady had a big fight, and she’s gone to her mother’s place. She told me to get out, so I got to move all my stuff out. I got it all packed up by the door ready to go.”

  He started lugging up a few things, a VCR, a TV, a dresser.

  “Let me give you a hand,” I said. “It won’t cost you as much.”

  I went down and he filled up the car and I brought him down to Forbes Street. He paid me, and I went on my way.

  The next day I get a call from the dispatcher: “You got to call constable so-and-so down at the RNC.” Lo and behold, buddy was robbing that apartment where I picked him up, and I was helping him. But I had no idea. I told the cop where I dropped him off and everything was hunky dory. The cop believed me. He said he would call me back if he needed anything else. But he never did.

  A Backyard Tour of Duckworth Street

  Gordon, driving for eighteen years

  A buddy of mine was driving past Kentucky Fried Chicken on Duckworth Street when a guy came running out with a ski mask on. He had a butcher knife in one hand and a bag of money in the other. Paddy’s not really a fighter, but he has a good sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. When the guy came out of the store, Paddy chased after him. Buddy took him on a backyard tour around Duckworth Street. He climbed up over a bunch of fences, and Paddy ripped him down and sat on him until the police came. The next day in the paper: “Police apprehended a man.” There was no mention of Paddy chasing him down all over hell’s half-acre and risking his life.

  The police always make themselves look good, but they’ll come around looking for help. I remember they came around looking for a brand new Caprice which was stolen right off the RNC parking lot. I saw the guy driving around because it was a lousy paint job, and the big silver Constabulary crest was showing right through the paint. And they couldn’t find that car? Buddy was driving it around like it was his own, day and night. I ran into him a dozen times.

  They came up to the stand looking for it. “Anyone see that?”

  “I saw the guy driving around,” I said. “It’s a bad paint job, though. The crest is showing right through the paint. I’m after running into him a dozen times.”

  They found it in the ghetto down on Little Street up on blocks. Everything was gone out of it; she was stripped down to the bone.

  Who Flushed All the Ecstasy Down the Toilet?

  Walter, driving for twenty-three years

  This guy I drove somewhere once, a drunk, phoned back and said, “I left my medication in the car.” The driver picked it up, and it was Oxycontin. He just flushed it down the toilet. I would do the same thing.

  I picked up this young girl. She might’ve been sixteen, and she was out of her mind. When she got up and left the car, I looked back and there was this tiny little pointer light. I picked it up, but it didn’t work. I flicked the switch and figured the batteries were dead. I opened it up, and here it was full of ecstasy. I went in and flushed the stuff down the toilet. One of the guys—he ended up punching the dispatcher in the face one night and got thrown out of the stand—was in the bathroom and said, “Who flushed all the ecstasy down the toilet?”

  “Me,” I said.

  “What did you do that for? I could’ve sold that for loot.”

  “I’m not adding to someone else’s misery,” I said. “It’s my ecstasy, and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want with it.”

  The Government Pays a Fortune

  Bazil, driving and dispatching for twelve years

  We drive a lot of the methadone people. The government pays a fortune to get them back and forth to the drugstores. This is big business for some of the stands.

  Some of these people are eighteen years old and you got to bring them down to line up to get their methadone. I guess it’s a testament to the amount of drugs that’s on the go when you see all of these young people on this program. You go to a drugstore that’s dispensing the methadone and all you see are taxis dropping them off to go in and get their methadone. It’s sad.

  It doesn’t seem like many people get off the program, either. I thought that with methadone they weaned you down off of it. They decrease your dose to try to get you off of it. At least, that’s the way they do it up in British Columbia. There’s one guy I’ve been driving for four years, and his dose hasn’t come down at all. He’s been taking the same dose for the last four years. They’re just giving them this drug so they’re not craving Oxycontin and out committing armed robberies to pay for it.

  What Happens Between You and the Driver

  Frank, driving for twenty-nine years

  You can go to your doctor and say, “I’ve been smoking pot all my life, and I can’t get off it.” They’ll put you on methadone. It’s as simple as that. Poof—you’re on it! “I got a cocaine habit.” Poof— you’re on it! You got a lot of people out there who wake up in the morning and say, “Where am I going to get my next buzz to?” That means they’re too far gone into their coke, or they’re too far gone into their Oxycontin. Methadone is a version of heroin—that’s all. It takes away the edge. They’re giving the addicts the buzz for nothing.

  For instance, take buddy on Queen’s Road. He’ll call us at ten to eight every morning. He goes up to Shoppers Drug Mart, and he’s the first one in line. If he can’t make it, he’ll call. The boys even know his authorization number, it’s gotten that bad. Everybody gets an authorization number. If you’re on welfare and you have a doctor’s appointment, you call your social worker, and then they’ll call us to approve a taxi. The Department of Social Services will authorize us to pick you up at your house, bring you to your doctor and, when you’re ready, drop you back home again. Then we’ll bill Social Ser
vices based on the information provided.

  There’s a good example, a crackhead who wants to sell his charge slip. [He points out the window to a young couple sitting on the sidewalk.] He’s got an $80 slip to go up to Paradise Medical Clinic. This guy gets his methadone at Downtown Pharmacy, but every week he gets authorization to go to Paradise Medical Clinic. He’ll turn around and sell that $80 charge to a driver for thirty bucks to buy dope. But what happens between you and the driver happens between you and the driver. When a driver normally comes home with fifty bucks, and now he got a chance to come home with seventy or eighty bucks, I’m not going to say anything.

  There Are No Prostitutes in St. John’s

  Theodore, driving for thirty-eight years

  Melissa Ditmore, chair of the New York-based Sex Workers’ Project, has pointed out that 85 per cent of New York sex workers operate indoors. In a study which focused on fifty sex trade workers, Behind Closed Doors: An Analysis of Indoor Sex Workers in New York City, she determined that while only 15 per cent of prostitutes work the streets, they account for an overwhelming number of arrests. Her findings share many similarities with other North American cities, including St. John’s, where prostitutes work in places like brothels, massage parlors, private homes and bars. Often it is only when communities complain about sex workers lingering in their neighbourhoods and police focus on sweeps and arrests that the public are made aware of them. The corner of Church Hill and Duckworth Street has long been known to be frequented by street prostitutes. CBC reported that over a two-month span six prostitutes and nine Johns were arrested in the area. Reinforced with images of discarded condoms, the reporter stated, “Everyone knows they’re working the street to feed their drug addiction.” But most sex workers enter the profession in times of financial vulnerability, and only a minority get involved because of drug abuse.